What is the focus of phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness specifically refers to the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds, known as phonemes, in spoken words. This skill is foundational for reading development, as it enables learners to segment sounds, blend sounds to form words, and manipulate sounds to create different words.

For example, a child with strong phonemic awareness can hear that the word "cat" consists of three distinct sounds /k/, /æ/, and /t/, and can also change the initial sound to create a new word, like "bat." This awareness is crucial because it serves as the bridge to connecting spoken language with written language.

The other options touch on related but distinct concepts; comprehension skills are about understanding the meaning of text, while vocabulary enhancement through writing deals with the development of word knowledge, and the understanding of letter-sound correspondence involves grapheme-phoneme relationships rather than the manipulation of sounds directly. Therefore, the option that correctly captures the essence of phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words.